The power of your thoughts

“I can make you rise or fall. I can work for you or against you. I can make you a success or a failure. I control the way that you feel and the way that you act. I can make you laugh…work…love. I can make your heart sing with joy…excitement…elation. Or I can make you wretched…dejected…morbid. I can make you sick…listless. I can be as a shackle…heavy…attached…burdensome. Or I can be as the prism’s hue…dancing…bright…fleeting…lost forever unless captured by pen or purpose. I can be nurtured and grown to be great and beautiful…seen by the eyes of others through action in you. I can never be removed…only replaced. I am a THOUGHT.”

~ Bob Cocklin
The above piece by author and successful businessman, Bob Cocklin, is an excerpt from the book The Difference Maker, by Mr. John C. Maxwell. The difference maker in our lives, according to Mr. Maxwell, is our attitudes. He used the above excerpt from Mr. Cocklin to show how our thoughts impact our attitudes. As we see in the excerpt, our thoughts make a huge impact on us.

Proverbs 23:7 of the Bible declares, “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he”.

Our thoughts are indeed very powerful; they can determine the outcome of our lives. A quote by Frank outlaw says, “Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words, they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habits. Watch your habits; they become character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.”Your destiny, what you become in life, grows from the seeds of your thoughts. What we think, we become.

Since our thoughts are so powerful, how can we change our way of thinking?

The term GIGO, Garbage In Garbage Out, is a computer terminology referring to the fact that the computer can only output what is input. The computer cannot control itself, it can only do what it is programmed to do, therefore if garbage is entered, garbage is what will exit. The same can be said about our minds, if we continually allow garbage to enter our brains, then garbage is what will exude from us in our thoughts, words and actions. We must therefore be careful what we allow to enter our minds. So how do thoughts enter our minds?

1. What we listen to
What we listen to has a great influence on our thoughts. We must be careful of the type of music we listen to or words expressed by family, friends or other persons we interact with.

It is said that many of the songs that persons listen to today such as Rap music, may have subliminal messages. Studies have shown that in some cases such as school shootings in the United States, when investigations are done, it is found that the culprits or persons accused of the crimes may have been acting out messages found in the lyrics of songs they were listening to.

We must also be careful of the type of persons we hang around and what we are hearing from them. Persons who constantly hang around people who curse and use obscene language soon begin doing so themselves.
Some persons are also very negative. They are always complaining about everything or doing all in their power to discourage or bring others down. We must be aware of such people and be careful of the advice we take from them. If we constantly hang around negative people, our minds can easily be saturated by their negative talks and we may begin to think as they do.We must therefore listen to positive things; be it gospel or some secular music, inspirational messages such as from Pastors or Motivational Speakers and associate with positive friends who can inspir